Continuity Project - Evaluation

Overall our project was considerably better than the last one in many ways, the most obvious being the increased variety of shots we were able to use effectively. Partially this was due to the fact that a lot more planning went into this project contrary to the last one, however even with all the planning there were still some points of our project that we did not plan out well enough or that had to be changed as a result of external factors. A prime example of this is the lighting, when we shot our project we had no idea how dark it would get and how quickly it would get dark. This meant by the time we had filmed the indoor shots at the beginning of the film it had already gotten dark outside, the primary factor of this was that we had to change location. Luckily we found a tunnel next to the Arnison centre that was reasonably well lit, however the lack of visibility is still present in the shooting, this screenshot effectively shows this:



The problem was that with the lack of light in the shoot the camera attempted to compensate for this, this only added the sort of reddish tint that are visible in most of the shots. Moreover from this we have learnt how the camera reacts to darkness and realised that filming at night is not practical when we do not possess the equipment to make it possible.

Also another result from the planning was our shot/reverse shot, in the film we had originally intended to use a phone call rather than an actual face to face conversation, we did not think to make sure the characters where facing in reverse directions and so when the shots were uploaded we realised both of them we talking in the same direction and not to each other. Upon further inspection of this we realised (with outside help) that this was not unfixable, we learnt how to reverse shots on the adobe software enabling us to make sure that the two characters were indeed facing in reverse directions.

Finally we had to also face one continuity error with our project, with a certain part of the film were James is pinned against the wall there is a camera cut, in one cut the monster has its hood up in the next it does not. Due to the amount of takes it took to actually get this scene we figured we may have been able to scavenge something that we could have used, we could not and so had to use the shot where the hood had come down. These screenshots accurately depict how this happened:





Despite this there were some very successful elements of our project, we made effective use of our specific genre, that being horror. From what we knew of horror films we implemented it into our project using some of the most popular horror conventions. One of which we feel was done particularly well was the way we gave the idea that the monster could just disappear assimilating an element of fear and mystery. We did this by having peter walking through the tunnel but showing the monster in the background, then as peter turned around the change in shot allowed the monster to move and disappear or at least creating that effect.In some genres this would seem to be a continuity error the way the character seems to disappear almost instantly, however using the horror genre this works well as the monster is assumed to be some sort of creature that has supernatural properties. We used this horror genre function in order to create atmosphere in out project.

The audience we intended this to be aimed at was someone who enjoys a horror movie, but not a die hard horror lover who enjoys movies that are relentlessly scary. They want to jump at a film, but at the same time be able to watch it without cowering behind the sofa.

To conclude, this piece was improved from our last piece in many ways also our research is present in the way we have incorporated horror techniques in order to make it fit with the genre. Use of planning has certainly improved this piece, but we still did not plan enough there are still points whereby the lack of planning is obvious such as the time of filming. Also another important thing we took from this is to take multiple shots. We realised that by doing this we would have been able to correct many of the errors that have taken place throughout the filming by scavenging it from other shots. So when it comes to the final project we will ensure that we take multiple shots of each piece of dialogue and action in order to rinse out any errors or problems in the shoot. If we had done that with this project it could have been massively improved in many ways and it would have perhaps flowed more continuously and seemed more professional.